Increment has launched.

If you haven't already taken a look, first take a quick trip
over to increment.com and take a look at Increment's
first issue, covering how any company can set up and succeed at on-call rotations.

Over the past three months, I've had the fairly rare opportunity
to watch Susan, Mercedes and Philipp
transform Increment from a rought concept into something
concrete (there are printed copies!).

It's been educational. Also, impressive.

Having never seen a magazine launch before, I would have never imagined
the sheer weight of details. Putting together a style guide. Drafting
a process for procuring artwork. Determining the quantity of artwork to include.
Picking a number of articles for each issue, and the mix between staff contributions
and industry contributions (especially for a first issue, as an unproven concept).
Projecting a completion rate for external contributions, and consequently the factor
of requested pieces beyond the minimum quantity.

Then comes the process of creating the content itself. The number of emails, phone calls
and reach outs to gather background information. Determining the content calendar.
Picking the article topics, and adapting them as the requested articles veer into unplanned
directions. Determining a defined voice (for reasons I still find suspicious my proposal of writing in the voice
of "tech david attenborough" didn't receive the adoption I hoped for).

Somehow Susan was able to navigate all of that, and much more,
and willed this thing into existence. I'm proud of the first issue,
and even more excited about what is coming down the pipe.

Overall, this project also does a pretty good job of illustrating why I remain
so excited about Stripe: it's retained it's ability to run a few interesting
experiments, while also focusing the majority of its work on the core mission.

Hi folks. I'm Will, known as @lethain on Twitter.
I write about software and management topics,
and love email at lethain[at]gmail.
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